MUSIC AND DANCE IN REVIEW

MUSIC AND DANCE IN REVIEW; Kotaro Fukuma

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: November 21, 2003

Alice Tully Hall

Kotaro Fukuma, a 21-year old pianist from Japan who won first prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition this year -- along with prizes in Finland and Japan -- has the solid technique one expects of a competition winner. More crucially, he has found a way to avoid the pressure toward interpretive cautiousness that has made the competition circuit so deadly. At his New York debut recital on Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall, he offered some surprising, even daring views of Scarlatti, Chopin and Brahms, and a vital work by a contemporary Japanese composer, Mutsuo Shishido.

Mr. Fukuma began with three Scarlatti Sonatas, each differently characterized. The most pleasing, for its assertiveness, was his account of the Sonata in D (K. 491), in which he at first suggested the focus and brightness of Scarlatti's harpsichord but then quickly took account of the piano's greater breadth. The work's contrasting second section, for instance, had a velvety, delicate and distant sound the first time he played it; at the repeat -- which came after a decidedly anachronistic dramatic pause -- this same music was an explosion of color.

Mr. Fukuma's reading of Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat (Op. 61) was notably less radical but gave a greater impression of Mr. Fukuma's tone palette. In that regard his performance of the Brahms Sonata No. 3 in F minor went farther still. In the outer movements and in the Scherzo he played with a weight, articulation and coloristic flexibility that touched on an often overlooked aspect of Brahmsian sensibility, a sense of grandeur couched in terms of sober modesty. And he painted the two Andante movements with a gently seductive tone, complete clarity of texture and the kind of dynamic gradation that creates the illusion that a work is a breathing organism.

Mr. Shishido's Suite Pour le Clavier, composed in 1968, was also a treat. Some of its sinew is drawn from traditional Japanese music, but with its zesty, sharp-edged opening and closing Toccatas and a freely dissonant central Andante, the influence that a Western listener will find most striking is that of Bartok. ALLAN KOZINN